Heartless?
by redvelvetcupcakes
Summary: ONESHOT! Ziva's mother sees her daughter for the last time.


A/N- I know I should be finishing my other two NCIS stories before writing more, but I've almost finished Forget Not Yet (promise), Second Chances is stagnant at the moment and One Last Time, doesn't really work as more than a one shot, I wrote it in two hours after seeing the Abby in Mexico ep and I liked it but when I tried Ziva's p.o.v, it wasn't the same. I will try but in the meantime I've just reseen the last ep of season 7 and here is roughly four or five years in the future.

I own nothing.

* * *

"How could you be so _heartless_?"

These words are screamed at me, in English, across an office space in Washington D.C America. My cheeks flare in humiliation as dozens stop to stare at the spectacle unfolding around them, I do not reply to the question because English has never been my strong suit and by the time I have translated the words, she has moved on.

"I prayed for you" she screeches, her hands clawing the air as if she would rip the entire world to shreds. "Every night I spent in hell, I prayed for you to come find me, to rescue me. I am your daughter! I am half of you, I am your blood and you left me there to die"

Behind her stand three men. An older, grey haired man with a coffee cup in his hand that he's drinking from even as his employee screams at me. A forty something year old dressed in Armani positioned at her back and a young man not even in his thirties next to him, both look ready to reach out and catch her.

Possibly restrain her.

"Four _months_! I suffered for four months, ninety-two days of bleeding, of starvation, of agony and for what? For the people I had abandoned, the people I had betrayed-" she flings an arm out, gesturing behind her, the young man steps back quickly to avoid being hit but the Armani clad one maintains his position, staring down at my daughter with an intensity that astounds me,

"For them to assume that something might be wrong and try to find me!" her hair is wild and her eyes are huge against her blotchy face, "They never had one damn reason to care what had happened to me and if it wasn't for them I would be dead right now or _worse_"

Her voice had lowered dangerously as she had uttered that sentence but it had risen again at the last word, reaching a new volume, causing the grey haired man's eyebrows to go up,

"Do you have any idea what it is like to lie in a hospital bed and know that no matter how broken you are, no matter how much you're hurting, that your own family will not come to see you?"

Once my mind makes sense of the words I open my mouth to protest but she does not want to hear me, does not want anything to tarnish the image of evil before her,

"Did you even think about me on my wedding day? When Gibbs gave me away and the Director's wife had to act as the mother of the bride, did you even wonder what I was feeling? With not one member of my family there on the happiest day of my life"

My daughter was married?

No one had told me, the news had not reached Israel.

Or perhaps it had and no one had deemed it necessary to tell me, perhaps once word of her defection to America had got out, everyone assumed that I would not want to know.

That my own daughter, my only surviving daughter was married- and I did not even know her husband's name.

* * *

I open my mouth and flounder for a moment as I try to remember the English translation of the word 'sorry'. I want to speak to her in Hebrew, in our native tongue with its soft sounds and the words that melt together, but even before this day I suspected that that part of her life was over, finished. She would never return to Israel, never again sleep in the family home and never again have tea with me in the little cafe in Ramat Aviv.

"Sorry?" My daughter spits the word back at me, "Sorry does not wipe away the five years since we last spoke, sorry does not alter the way you abandoned me to my death, sorry does not change the fact that my daughter is six months old and the only grandmother she knows is Holly Snow!"

She has a daughter?

Oh Eli you _bastard._

"No" she shakes her head as I make to approach her, "There is nothing you can say and nothing that I want to hear from you, do not contact me ever again"

With that she waves her hand to dismiss me and turns her back with such ease and finality that my heart breaks. I am escorted from the building by the grey haired man who does not speak to me once as he walks me to my rental car. Or perhaps he does and I am simply too numbed by grief to realise.

* * *

I had booked the penthouse suite at the Embassario hotel for the week with the suggestion that I may need to prolong my stay. I had planned to be in America, in Washington, for a month. Now I look around the luxurious yet impersonal room and tell the bell boy to get me a flight back to Tel Aviv.

I had been there two days and would leave for Israel tomorrow evening.

I had not even seen the Washington Mall, nor did I have any desire to now.

Still fully clothed, I climb onto the bed and do not even bother to get under the covers; all I want to do is sleep.

When I open my eyes night has fallen and I am dehydrated. Not only that but someone is knocking insistently at my door, I want to ignore them, to roll over and sleep until 14:30 tomorrow when the car arrives to take me to Dulles airport. But instead I slowly get to my feet and trudge across the vast expanse of room to pull on the heavy, ornate door.

Opening it to reveal a vampire holding a deep red blanketed bundle,

"Hi," she greets me nervously, "Um we can only stay for an hour or so, Ziva thinks we're out window shopping for stuffed toys"  
I frown in confusion and open my mouth to protest as she bustles through my door and into the lounge room, for a moment I want to call security but then she sits down and lowers the bundle onto the couch and I realise what she is holding, who she is holding.

My granddaughter.

* * *

She opens her eyes when I pick her up and stares at me intently, brilliant green eyes with entire worlds within them.

"She is beautiful" I murmur, pushing the red blanket back so I can admire her brown curls.

For the next hour I hold my granddaughter in my arms, and this woman- Abigail- feeds me the information I so greedily desire.

I learn that her name is Jennifer Caitlin DiNozzo, Jenny or Kate for short. She has a little red birthmark on her left wrist, but no other blemishes. So far she appears to love all food but her favourite toy is a gremlin bought for her by her 'Uncle' Jimmy. She is being raised in the Jewish faith but will celebrate Easter and Christmas, for pleasurable more so than religious reasons. To get her to sleep my daughter plays a recording of 'The Magic Flute' for her, apparently it soothed Ziva during her exceptionally difficult pregnancy.

Even as I dread the answer, I ask and learn that after Somalia, my daughter was told that the likelihood of her having a baby was slim, that the damage to her body was too severe for the doctors to even consider extracting her eggs let alone suggest that she carry the baby within her womb for nine months. But she was so determined to give my son-in-law a child that she went off her contraception without telling anyone until after she was already pregnant.

An abortion was out of the question, for medical and personal reasons.

Hurling her defiance at the world, my daughter risked everything to create a life outside of her own, going into labour at only six months and in such a critical condition that no-one expected her to survive the birth.

Hooked up to life support, my daughter was not even conscious when her child was brought into the world. She lay comatose for three days while the doctors warned everyone to prepare for the worst.

Apparently it was deemed a medical miracle when my daughter opened her eyes and demanded to see her child- but- as Abigail explained to me, she lived because one Leroy Jethro Gibbs slapped her on the back of the head and told her to wake up.

* * *

I want to know more but already my granddaughter is being lifted from my arms and her blanket tucked around her to protect her from the winter chill. I walk her to the door and thank her for coming; she nods but, just as she goes to leave, hesitates,

"Are you really here just to see Ziva? Or did Eli send you?"

I could tell her the truth, that I have not obeyed my husband since the day he brought his love child home to live with us, that we have not been man and wife for nearly ten years, that he could no more order me to America than he could to heaven. But instead, I think of my granddaughter and commit the one true selfless act of my wasted life.

"Eli sent me" I lie, seeing her eyes widen in fear, "He ordered me to convince Ziva to return to Israel, to threaten or harm our son-in-law or granddaughter if need be"

I am not sure what I feel when the woman flees from my hotel room, taking with her the grandchild that I will never see again.

Grief? Perhaps in the knowledge that I will be remembered only as a threat to my surviving daughter and her family.

Joy? The moment the lie fell from my lips it became a truth more powerful than myself. Powerful enough to protect my granddaughter for the rest of her life.

Satisfied? No, not that. Reconciled, more like. After thirty-two years, two children and a world that I both created and destroyed, ruled and slaved I have finally become a mother at the same moment that I irrevocably lost my daughter.

All that is left for me is to return to Israel and to fight against the man I have spent all these years adoring and hating with equal passion.

My worst love and dearest enemy.

Director of the Mossad- Eli David.


End file.
